I'm a bit doubtful if when I want to say "I've been to England." in the past simple, I can say I was to England, or I have to change the preposition and say "I was in England" (which is the thing I always say). If one (past simple) gets the preposition 'in' and the other one (present perfect) gets the preposition 'to', what's the logic behaind that?
Grammar – ‘I’ve Been to England’ Vs. ‘I Was in England’: Preposition Use
grammarprepositions
Related Solutions
All three of your sentences are grammatically well-formed, but they mean different things.
I wasn't able to ride a bike until I was 20 means that you learned how to ride a bike when you were 20—before that you could not ride a bike.
I was able to ride a bike until I was 20 means that before you were 20 you were able to ride a bike but at that age something happened—perhaps you lost a leg!—after which you were no longer able to ride a bike.
I had been able to ride a bike until I was 20 describes the same sequence of events of facts as 2., but is used when your current topic is a past situation—some time before the present but after your 20th year. For instance:
When I was in graduate school some years ago, a friend invited me to go on a bicycle trip. I had to decline; I had been able to ride a bike until I was 20, but in my junior year I was in an accident that messed up my ankle.
The preposition until designates a timespan lasting up to the timepoint named by its object, and ending at that point.
I have been being here is not idiomatic.
You have probably learned that there is a category of verbs which are only very rarely used in with the progressive/continuous construction: stative verbs like be, know, live, see which express a state rather than an action or event. These verbs have the fundamental sense of a continuing state (which is what the progressive/continuous construction expresses) built into their meanings, so the progressive/continuous is superfluous.
For the same reason these verbs are rarely used with the progressive/continuous perfect construction. Indeed, there is even stronger pressure to avoid the progressive/continuous perfect, because the perfect is also inherently stative: it designates a state which came into being as a result of a prior action or event.
Saying I have been being here for ten years thus adds nothing to the sense of I have been being here for ten years, so we don't say it.
Furthermore: These "rules", like most "rules" of grammar, are not absolute: there are exceptions. But lexical be (that is, be as a main verb, not a component of the progressive or passive construction) is exceptionally resistant to exception, because it is the most "stative" of verbs: it ordinarily expresses nothing beyond a particular state. In consequence, when lexical be is cast in the progressive construction it usually has a different meaning, approximately "temporarily behave":
"John is being a jerk" does not mean that John is a jerk but that John is behaving like a jerk right now.
Best Answer
No real logic here. Just an idiom.
There is an idiom "I've been to X" which means the same as "I've gone to X", and the "to" is used for the same reason as it is used in "go to". But the idiom doesn't extend to other tenses of "be". So "I am to England" is generally incorrect. Dictionaries note that this sense of "be" is only used in perfective constructions, and is just one of those little restrictions on the use of a word in a particular sense.